I'm in JAPAN but with my FAMILY in EARLY to MID MARCH????

Hello Japanese Weeaboo Gamers, welcome to my epic Blog Post about my first week in Japan with my family yippee yayayayayay I love japan!



Thank you for tuning back into The Blog, I hope you have had an excellent time since last we met. I would like to inform for the record that I am back travelling for the next at least like couple months, hopefully until the summer! To get this little travel stint started I am in Japan with my family who I haven't travelled with in a long time :) So far it's been a real blast! Weird travelling with people instead of by myself, but it's been a very good push to start travelling solo again, sorry family ;)

ANYWAYS!

Japan is kinda pretty cool. It's always been a dream destination of mine to go to, and now that I'm here???? Yeah kinda fuckin sick???? I'll go by it day by day real fast, but god damn this country is so cool and very reasonably priced compared to Canada and probably absolutely problematic in a miriad of ways unbeknowst to the tourist I am right now, but AS a tourist I am having a great time.

ANYWAYS AGAIN, let's start off by talking about the mother freaking FLIGHT? It was fine, I got to watch Kingsmen with the swears and most of the violence dubbed out which was genuinely hilarious, that movie is so chock full of profane scenes, and hearing the characters scream "WHAT THE FREAK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU FREAKING MADMAN" was a joy for me. I also watched Sinners but the audio got cut out for the last 10 minutes of the movie which was very sad so I didn't get to finish it. Otherwise a very decent flight, obviously better than AirCanada or WestJet because those are the most bottom of the barrel airlines, SCREW those guys.


So the first day we got here, we were all pretty hyped, hopped onto the epic super fast train from the airport, got to the hotel grabbed some food and CRASHED (we were very tired 10 hour flights are not to be sneezed at). The NEXT day though we were all up into that shit, since our internal clocks were all super destroyed, we were awake at like 5AM and I had a delicious instant noodles and Boss coffee breakfast, and decided to take a walk. We were staying in Ueno and hit up the park around there and it was pretty nice :) There were a few cherry blossoms (plum blossoms? idk) since it's early spring and they were super pretty, but it was mostly just a chill excuse to get used to the neighborhood and stretch our legs after the flight + train death combo. We got to explore a little more and hit up the Ameyoko Market when it was relatively quiet (which for the record, let me speak this, was absolutely HILARIOUS to try to navigate through on our way to the hotel after being awake for basically 24 hours, that was so unbelievably funny to me mamma mia). Then in the night we got to hit up TEAMLABS BORDERLESS BAYBEEEEE, a for sures dream Japan destination for me AND IT WAS SICKKKKKKK!!! The art there is honestly overwhelming, it's such an immersive audiovisual experience and when you read about what it takes to make each exhibit, it's just... DAMN it's so cool!!! I'm sure each work has a bunch of hardworking minds behind them, but they all have such a personal touch that it's clear what the artists vision was even if it took a team to make it. For those taht don't know, these works are I guess in a way, simulations?? As in, they're these massive, projected digital tapestries, but they're all constantly thinking, and changing. Instead of just being the same repeating video on loop for ages, these animations are being rendered in REAL TIME, which allows for extremely cool effects, like how some of them are interactive! Like the waterfall/river in one of the main rooms will move around people who are sitting in its stream despite it just being a projection, being able to live switch the patterns of LED lights depending on the whims of the observer, and my favorite,

INSERTING YOUR OWN DRAWINGS AS FISH IN A PROJECTED AQUARIUM AND THEN HAVING THEM SWIM AROUND THE REST OF THE EXHIBIT.

I cannot make this shit up, it's some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen in my life, the people behind these are mad GENIUSES and I'm constantly baffled and amazed at what they have made. If you ever get a chance to see ANY of their artworks, PLEASE GO THEY ARE SO GOOD...

Here are some photos from that day :)





I was crashing HARD tbh, the time change really messed me up :( However we had a lovely sleep then got up for Tokyo DisneySEA the next day!!!! Wowowowowowowowow DISNEYLANN!!!! I had no expectations going into it, but man that place blew my brain outta my ass with how cool it was. It absolutely lives up to the Disney name, the default California Disneyland is already extremely detailed and well built and I didn't think it could be matched, but lo and behold DisneySEA absolutely met the standards of quality!!! There were so many cool zones, like the Italian themed district you walk into upon arrival, the cool Toy Story and Little Mermaid themed areas, and my favorite, the Jules Verne "Mysterious Island" themed area taht takes place in a fake caldera near the GIANT VOLCANO that the whole park circles around. We had a really fun time exploring all the cool areas and doing rides, we were only there for a day but I feel like we made the most of it :) the animatronics and stuff on the rides were astounding as well, dude SINBAD???? I didn't know there wven WAS a Sinbad ride here, and while yeah, it's for little baby children like Small World, dude the animatronics are on another level there. NO other ride matched the level of smooth motion and EXTREMELY SMOOTH FACIAL EXPRESSIONS? that ride had. Props to whoever made the Sinbad robots, ya'll kicked some MAJOR ass with that one. Very few pictures from this day because it was FREEZING and RAINING and COLD that day and I did not want to take my hands out of my pockets to take photos, sucks to suck :P

After a very restful night after freezing our asses off, we then took a chill day to go check out the Tokyo Skytree :) this was a huge day for me because I got to go to my first Pokemon Center! It was a very magical experience, I love Pokemon very much so being in a place wall to wall with pokemon stuff was sooo freaking cooollllllllllllllllllll....... Despite it being a horrible capilast store, they had that Disneyland level production quality on some of these decorations, and you felt very immersed within the store. They also had like ALMOST EVERY pokemon for sale as a plush, and I copped a Sentret, a beautiful creachur I caught like 1 million of when I was a child. He also looked very sad on the shelf and was extremely friend shaped so I picked him up as well as some TCG stuff for my one piece cards back home hehehehe >:)



I had a really good time there, nevermind the skytree, who cares about THAT stupid thing ;) just kidding it was pretty good too, it was SUPER cool seeing Tokyo from super high up :) Apparently you can see Mt. Fuji on a clear day, but it was slightly too cloudy/smoggy so we couldn't see it. Just being high up was super cool in and of itself. There was also some kind of Madoka Magika event going on but I don't care about that show so being in the world's tallest tower was the most epic part.



We also hit the aquarium after this to really make the most of the day. It was super cute, but I wish that the bigger fish had more space to move around. The larger shark and rays they had were confined to a tank I would argue is much too small for them :( Although apparently this is one of the more ethical aquariums in Tokyo, so I'll take it at least. They also had some seals that I think could've had a better home, I couldn't tell if it was just because it was nighttime or if the aquarium was indoors, but they SEEMINGLY had no natural light and that is very sads :( The rest of the aquarium was banging though, they had a bunch of super cool jelly bloobin around and loads of cute little reef fish and mudskippers and stuff :) Also penguins! but my pictures of them didn't turn out at all so you'll just have to take my word for it. Right when we were leaving, we also found a giant board detailing the penguins relationships with each other and much to the chagrin of my very tired parents, we had to stop and decipher who had the craziest beef and love triangles and stuff. You will also have to take my word that this exists because I did not grab a photo. Here are some other photos however!

The longer I get into this trip and the more cool stuff I have to talk about, the more I realize this first post is gonna be REALLY run-on LMAO.

I'll speed through some stuff to attempt to catch up to "Current Day", whenever that is when this gets posted. We then had a fun and hectic travel day, and can I just mention how absolutely useful but also dummy stressful japanese trains are? While the stories are true, yes they are PERFECTLY on time, yes they arrive VERY FREQUENTLY, they are also situated in the most chaotic and mazelike stations I've ever been in. While I'm sure this wouldn't be much of an issue for people from countries with an actual working transit system, the best I've experienced is Vancouver's skytrains, which at wildest, has like the Commercial Broadway station that connects 2 lines together. These insanity architects in Japan are out here connecting 16 goddamn platforms together like it's no big deal. Trying to navigate that while also pushing through a sea of people WHILE ALSO trying to get 3 other people to the right stop is just the tiniest bit unenviable. But I would like to spoil for the rest of the trip, we did not miss ANY trains or anything bad like that I'm proud to say :) It may be chaos, but It Just Works.

I bring this up because we had a very big travel day, going all the way to the tiny little city of Nakatsugawa. It was a very cute, picturesque little city where we slept in an adorable old style japanese house a cool guy turned into an Airbnb with his canadian friend. We were just here for the night however, as this was out launching pad for the Nakasendo Trail, an old samurai trail that connected Tokyo to Kyoto back in The Olden Times. This was absolutely my favorite part of the trip so far. I sdore cool outdoors hikes, and this one had so much amazing history to it as well! We got really lucky while hiking, and ran into a newspaper writer and her volunteer guide, who tuned us in to some of the history of the trail.

I'm not gonna lie, I'd be hard pressed to remember a lot of the trivia now, but one thing that stuck out is how the trail used to take roughly a month to hike if you had favorable conditions. Now by Shinkansen? 2 whol hours from Tokyo to Kyoto. They were both awesome, just super friendly faces we were not expecting to run into. The trail itself was also beautiful. It's extremely well maintained, and winds between tall trees, some residential areas, and over rivers and beside waterfalls. It wasn't even horribly challenging, which I appreciated greatly. I've been dogged on by too many straight vertical hikes last summer to even consider doing another remotely challenging one.



Easily what made this the best thing for me were the little stops along the way. Along the trail, we first encountered this old house with signs that read along the lines of "Free Garden! Too old to take care of now, but please enjoy.", and an older gentleman (I presume) had made little pathways through his yard filled with cute little sculptures and old trying-to-bloom flower bushes, with old rotting benches for you to take a rest if you needed. It felt very sweet and melancholic, like so much life had been lived here but is now just another 5 minute attraction on the road. Wishing that guy that lives there the most happiness, for real.

The other really cool stop was this EXTREMELY old looking tea house about halfway through. You could see smoke seeping from the roof as you got close, and it had a cute little chalkboard on the front tallying where all the travellers had come from. Inside was hazy with smoke, but SUPER cozy. A small fire burned in a big open fireplace and the most chill guy ever was there to greet us with a warm cup of green tea for our tired bodies. It might have just been the smoke, but it really reminded me of my Uncle Phil's house, especially with how welcoming it was. Absolute highlight for sure, definitely not going to forget that for a hot minute.

ANOTHER one of the most beautiful parts was the beginning and the end. We started in this cute little town, Magome-Juku, which is this super cute old style japanese village that feels super tucked away. It's not at all, it's actually a pretty big tourist hotspot, HOWEVER the feeling remained. There were loads of cute little houses and water features and water wheels and tiny little shops serving chestnut sweets, it was SO PRETTY. The same can be said for where we ended, Tsumago-juku. I'm genuinely uncertain if people actually LIVE in these places, or if they just go there for work??? Cause like, these are some OLD buildings, and while SOME of them look fairly maintained, a majority looked like they weren't "lived in" for lack of a better word. Either way, amazing hike, would HIGHLY reccomend it to EVERYONE. I really wanted to buy some ceramics here, but

1. I could not afford it.
2. It would have smashed probably very quickly with how hard we were throwing our bags around.
3. I also wanted to buy cool snacks >:)

Magome was also where we had our first taste of wagyu beef with some freshly grated wasabi, and oh my god let me tell you what, that stuff is utterly divine, I get it now, I understand why it's prohibitively expensive, mamma freaking mia. Some of the best food I've had here, no doubt, and the wasabi was such a cherry on top, actually the best wasabi I've ever tasted in my entire life.



OKAY LAST THING THEN I'M OUTTA HERE!

After our lovely time on the Nakasendo, we took yet another train to Kyoto! We ended up near a big nightclub area which was hilarious. It was fun to listen to all those young folk having fun until like 7am when my dad and I would go for a morning walk to get some breakfast and get to see the last dregs of the nightclubs find their way home :) That sounded sarcastic but I swear that's genuine, it was actually very funny. We basically just did a giant tour of the city for our first day, hitting up all the hotspots like the bamboo forest, the 5 story pagoda, and

MONKEY MOUNTAIN BITCHHHHHHHH

Oh you didn't think I was just going to make this all about monkey mountain? You fool. You swine. Why would I talk about anything else? Anyways, as we toured around in the earlier am, we started with the more touristy areas since it'd be much quieter compared to going later. This however was right beside Arashiyama Monkey Park, aka

MONKEY MOUNTAIN BITCHHHHHHHH

so we told our guide we'd be heading up (he noped out as this was NOT the itinerary but he'd wait for us at the bottom), and started our surprisingly steep trek to the top of

MONKEY MOUNTAIN BITCHHHHHHHH

And yes it was surprisingly steep. While not a huge challenge for me because I'm JACKED, there were a lot of people struggling up the slopes to the top which sucked, I wish

MONKEY MOUNTAIN BITCHHHHHHHH

wasn't so gatekept behind that level of physical fitness. Either way, we made it to the top and, oh my god, there were FUNKY MONKEYS EVERYWHERE. These mfs were goofin around in the trees, hanging out amongst the people, and generally being silly little guys. There was even a little shack with ANOTHER wood burning stove inside where you could buy apples and peanuts to FEED THE MONKEYS... It was a very enchanting experience, I loved giving those silly fellas snacks so damn much. They just aggresively stick their hand under or through the bars of the shack's cage windows to ask for another morsel. The little ones would even stick their whole arm through before the fatass older monkey would roll up and scare them off. There was also a SICK view of Kyoto at the top, what more could you ask for? I just had a fantastic time hanging out and feeding monkeys and watching them monkey around. But alas, we had other stuff to do that day, so we had to bid farewell to

MONKEY MOUNTAIN BITCHHHHHHHH

and head back down to our guide. Sad. So very very sad. Here are some cool pictures of Les Monkeys:

We also saw some other things that day, but they weren't monkey so yeah whatever pictures I guess.



Anyways, I think that'll about do me for today. If I kept writing this would never come out and it would just detail the entire trip in excrutiating detail These also take a while to write out and collate so I'll try to take at least 1 rest day a week to attempt to put one of these together! Feels good to be writing on this website again, I like making this silly site and will be very happy to keep posting on it for a while :)

Anyways, thanks for reading! Hope ya'll have a lovely afternoon/evening/morning or whatever when you read this :)